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World's First Molten-Salt Solar Plant Opens

Posted by timothy on from the entire-mountain-is-covered-with-snow dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Sicily has just announced the opening of the world's first concentrated solar power (CSP) facility that uses molten salt as a heat collection medium. Since molten salt is able to reach very high temperatures (over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit) and can hold more heat than the synthetic oil used in other CSP plants, the plant is able to continue to produce electricity long after the sun has gone down. The Archimede plant has a capacity of 5 megawatts with a field of 30,000 square meters of mirrors and more than 3 miles of heat collecting piping for the molten salt. The cost for this initial plant was around 60 million Euros."

2 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's really not competitive yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    5MW for $60M (euro).. really?

    That's normal. First, it's a prototype. Second, it's Italy. Third, it's Sicily.

    The project started something like 20 years ago by the Nobel Prize laureate (physics) Carlo Rubbia. Seven different governments (both right-wing and center-left-wing) made every effort to cripple the project with bad management and bureaucratic issues. At the same time they poured heaps of money to dubious Sicilian consulting organisations. After a while (actually, after being dismissed from the environmental cabinet) Carlo Rubbia got tired of all these problems and flew to Spain where he built in 3 years six or seven similar plants for a tenth of their Italian price.

  2. Come on.. by sisko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What's this Fahrenheit rubbish?